Pinewood Drama Team hosts Annual Katie Bell Jarriel Dinner Theater
By: Ginny Nutting, PCA Freshman
On October 19th, Pinewood held their One Act play, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Fifth Period written by Jason Pizzarello. Mrs. Stephanie Largent and Susan Nobles directed the play. The night started off with a sit down dinner catered by Mrs. Cathi Willet. After the meal, the audience enjoyed watching PCA’s One Act play.
The play begins with a nerd named Tommy (Clint Strickland) who has been terrorized by the school bullies, Bugs and Burp (Cade Beecher and Gabe Edwards). With Burp about to graduate, Tommy devises a plan to win his freedom from bully tyranny by getting Bugs a date to the prom with the popular theatre girl, Stephanie Mezaluna (Claire Mullis). The problem with this plan, however, is that Stephanie is dating another actor named Chad Glamorville (Brinson White) which complicates things. In order for the plan to work, Tommy must convince Steve (Smith Dekle) to help him by pretending to be Bug’s talent agent so that Stephanie will think he is a star and will go to prom with him. Smith sees this as an opportunity to find his sister, Veronica (Elizabeth O’Brien) a date to the prom so he will not have to take her and will be able to take his girlfriend Cora (Peighton White). Once Steve is on board, Tommy seeks out Shelly (Julia Hethcox) the student costume designer to come up with a suit for Steve. Shelly agrees to help. The catch is that Veronica will only go with Chad. Tommy manages to work out the plan by convincing Chad that Veronica is terminally ill and would be a great opportunity for him to fulfill his need for a charity case, as he states, “any good actor has.” In the end, Tommy manages to coordinate the biggest scheme to become free of the school bullies only to find out that Burp, the worst of the two, had failed his academic requirements and will be back at school next year.
The cast of crew of this year’s production consisted of 33 students in grades 9-12 with backgrounds in athletics, creative arts, and academic leadership positions. This year’s play was one that truly captured the personalities of its actors and allowed their diverse backgrounds to be showcased in the culmination of a fun, comedic experience that can only happen in high school. For some of the students this was their first time participating in One Act, but you would not know it from the wonderful performance they brought. Well done, PCA one act team.
